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Inequality and the Future of London

When: Thursday, March 26, 2026, 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM
Where: PP2 Lecture Theatre, The People's Palace, Mile End

Join PQ and the Mile End Institute to celebrate a new Special Collection, 'Inequality, Opportunity, and the Future of the Capital'

The Mile End Institute and the Political Quarterly invite you to a special discussion of inequality in London – a subject that is increasingly central to public debate. The discussion of inequality in Britain frequently pits a successful, prosperous London against areas of the UK that have been ‘left behind’. Yet London itself is riven by inequality, with millions of people living in poverty and very different experiences of healthcare, air quality and educational opportunity.

Inspired by a special issue of Political Quarterly, this panel explores how inequality manifests itself in London through housing and planning reform, the legacy of levelling up and shifts in the electoral loyalties of different ethnic groups. It sets London’s challenges within the wider context of inequality in the UK, exploring what is familiar and what is distinctive about the capital. Bringing together academics, policymakers, parliamentarians and practitioners, it explores the perils for London, the Labour government and the rest of the UK of leaving inequality in the capital unchecked.

This event will be held in the PP2 Lecture Theatre in the People's Palace, which is number 16 on this map of Queen Mary's Mile End campus. You can find it on What3Words at: https://w3w.co/slows.prom.intelligible.

Panel

Dr Louise Ashley is an Associate Professor and IHSS Fellow at Queen Mary University of London. She is an expert on gender, ethnic and socio-economic diversity in “elite professions” and has contributed to the government’s Social Mobility Commission and the City of London Corporation’s Taskforce on Socioeconomic Diversity. She has written widely on social mobility in Britain and published Highly Discriminating: Why the City isn’t fair and Diversity doesn’t work in 2022.

Mike Brewer is Deputy Chief Executive of the Resolution Foundation and author of What Do We Know And What Should We Do About Inequality? He is a Visiting Professor at the Department of Social Policy at the LSE, a former Professor of Economics at the University of Essex and has worked at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and HM Treasury.

Dr Sacha Hilhorst is a post-doctoral fellow in sociology at the LSE and co-author of Why Wealth Inequality Matters. Her doctoral work explored the shifting politics of ex-mining and manufacturing towns in the Midlands, identifying a crisis of legitimacy in England’s former industrial heartlands. She has written widely on corruption, class and ‘How the Labour heartlands lost their faith in politics’.

Rupa Huq MP has been the Labour Member of Parliament for Ealing Central and Acton since 2015. Before entering Parliament, she completed a PhD in Cultural Studies at the University of East London and taught sociology and criminology at the University of Manchester and Kingston University. She published Beyond Subculture on culture, identity and youth politics in 2006.

Professor Graeme Atherton (Chair) is Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Regional Engagement at the University of West London, Vice-Principal of Ruskin College, Oxford and the Director of the World Access to Higher Education Network. He is the Head of the Ruskin Institute for Social Equity (RISE), and edited this special issue.

 

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